It has been suggested that this assault of the men on the bearer of the sun shield dramatizes the attack of hostile powers on the sun, and that the object is to offset malign influences or to draw back the sun from a disappearance suggested by its southern declination.[44] In this possible interpretation it is well to consider that immediately preceding it the archaic offerings and prayers to the great snake were made, as described, in the presence of spectators. The idea of hostility of the great snake to the sun is an aboriginal American conception. In the Maya Codex Cortesianus (33_b_) the plumed snake is represented[45] as swallowing the sun as in an eclipse. If Soyáluña is a propitiatory ceremony to prevent the destruction or disappearance of the sun in winter or to offset the attacks of hostile malevolent deities upon him, we can see a possible explanation of the attacks and defenses of the sun as here dramatized.[46] The evil influences of the great snake are met by the prayers to his effigy; the attacks of other less powerful deities are dramatized in the manner indicated. The following contains a few suggestions in regard to the character of the dramatization in the December celebration. In the prayers to the Plumed Snake his hostility was quieted, and the chiefs did what they could to propitiate that powerful deity, who was the great cause of their apprehension that the beneficent sun (Táwa) would be overcome. Then followed the dramatization of the conflict of opposing powers, possibly representing other deities hostile to our beneficent father, the sun. Although the struggle involved, so far as the participants were concerned, their highest powers of endurance and bodily suffering, the sun-shield or symbol of Táwa had the good fortune to resist the many assaults made upon it.